Swine flu games infect the web

Talk of a possible flu pandemic provoked a variety of responses. Some ran off to the chemist to stock up on face masks, some panicked at the sound of a sneeze, while others just pigged out on cut-price pork.

Then there are the Flash games developers. Locked in a room, untroubled by thoughts of looming apocalypse, they've been filling the web with dozens of virus-related games.

Here are three of the funniest.

Hamdemic

Not unlike Yetisports, this is a catapult game, but in this case you find yourself in Mexico and your task is to hurl pigs across the US border. The pig will land after some bouncing, but if you want to increase the range you can blast away at with a Colt revolver, which makes it travel further, for some reason. Apart from the pigs, there are few references to the virus, and after a few rounds you could get tired of it. Still, the comic effect of seeing an American sealed in an anti-infection suit hitting a pig with a hatchet is priceless.

Stop Swine Flu

Initially released in 2008 under the name Sneeze, it has recently been relaunched with a new headline-catching title. The aim of the game is to infect the greatest number of people in various environments: a park, a nursery and a factory. You get one sneeze for each level. It's easier to infect children - who sport a red top and move around manically - and the elderly, who move slowly and are wearing a yellow top. Adults are purple and they are more resistant to the virus. As you sneeze, the group of people that you managed to infect with your first sneeze move for a few more seconds until they also sneeze, causing a chain reaction. You must infect a certain percentage of people per level. By the end you'll feel cruelly satisfied.

Pandemic II

In this bioterrorist-themed game, you are not specifically faced with swine flu, but you may recreate it. The task of the game is to come up with a biological threat of some sort (a virus, bacterium or parasite), which you name and spread around the globe. Pandemic II is anything but banal: as the disease spreads you gain points that you can use to increase its lethality and infectiveness. But watch out, if your virus becomes too threatening too fast, governments may react by closing up routes while vaccinations are prepared.

Bored with H1N1, we created a virus called "idiocy" which spread through sneezing and caused a withering diarrhoea. Tactically speaking, it was a blast.